Ponting's happy homecoming

Chloe Saltau

Ricky Ponting - pictured with Mike Hussey after notching a double century against India in Adelaide - is showing his best form, and demeanour, in years. Photo: Getty Images

IT PROBABLY doesn't matter much who captains Australia on Friday night, but going back to Ricky Ponting feels like putting on a comfortable old pair of slippers, albeit a pair that had frayed around the seams by the time he handed the captaincy to Michael Clarke less than a year ago.

Clarke will be back soon enough and there is no reason for every decision to be geared towards an unspecified date several years in the future.

But Steve Waugh - an author of the Argus report that criticised the incoherent policies of the previous panel - made some reasonable points when he criticised the selectors for confusing decisions in turning to Ponting ahead of a future leader, David Warner, and for sending mixed messages about Brad Haddin, whose ''rest'', which looks suspiciously like an axing, has stretched into another block of one-dayers.

Chairman of selectors John Inverarity answered the first criticism by explaining that while Warner is leadership material, it's too soon to burden him with the captaincy of his country.

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Gone is Captain Grumpy, who revealed himself regularly during Ponting's final months as captain.

Instead, the 37-year-old is one of the spriteliest men in the team, leaping about in the field, plucking catches and throwing down the stumps during one-day games in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Faced with a century drought lasting almost two years, it seemed inconceivable that Ponting would still command selection in the Test and one-day teams by the end of the summer, much less help the selectors out of a leadership crisis.

Equally, his promise that there would be no awkwardness about his presence under a new captain was greeted with scepticism.

But he has delivered on both counts, winding back the clock with the bat and contributing vital support to Clarke, while letting him establish his own style as captain.

Waugh's second point, about Haddin, is more valid. Inverarity says the veteran wicketkeeper will come under consideration towards the end of the triangular series, but Haddin appears to have made peace with the fact he will go to the West Indies as first-choice gloveman in Tests only, with Matthew Wade as his understudy.